The NFT market is cooling down.
According to data from The Block Research, between May and June, the monthly transaction volume of NFT dropped from US$4 billion to US$1.04 billion, a decrease of 74%.
The 74% drop is the largest sequential decline in NFT market trading volume to date. The second largest month-on-month decline occurred between February and March this year, at a 48% drop. 
OpenSea dominated the market in June with a total trading volume of $696 million, accounting for 67% of the total trading volume for the month. Despite accounting for the majority of NFT trading volume during the NFT market downturn, OpenSea announced on July 14 that it would lay off 20% of its workforce.
Despite declining transaction volumes, Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace for Solana-based NFTs, has been slowly vying for market share with OpenSea — even after OpenSea activated support for Solana in April of this year. Magic Eden accounted for 0.1% of trading volume at the start of 2022 and now accounts for more than 10% of that volume, according to The Block. 
The NFT market has experienced its first bear market test, and mergers and acquisitions have become its main theme.
Since 2013, 53 M&A transactions have occurred in NFT and GameFi, of which 20 have occurred in the first two quarters of 2022 (8 and 12 transactions in the first and second quarters respectively), accounting for 38% . Despite the recent cooling of the NFT market, the number of 12 M&A transactions in the NFT field in the second quarter of 2022 hit a record high.
Among them, there are three mergers and acquisitions that deserve attention and are likely to cause changes in the market structure.
On April 25, OpenSea announced the acquisition of NFT market aggregator Gem, stating that the move was an "investment in the future of the professional community" and improved user experience. After the acquisition is completed, Gem will continue to operate independently of OpenSea as an independent product and brand. Obviously, this is a "defensive" merger from a monopoly.
On June 22, Uniswap Labs acquired the NFT aggregation platform Genie, which was seen as a signal for it to enter the NFT trading market. According to official information, starting this fall, users will be able to buy and sell NFTs on the Uniswap application, and this top crypto-asset decentralized exchange will also develop into a comprehensive platform. As the leader of DEX, Uniswap’s acquisition of Genie can be described as the first case of vertical integration between the ERC721-based NFT market and the ERC20 token market, which will change the landscape of the entire NFT market to a certain extent.
On the same day in June, e-commerce giant eBay announced that it had acquired KnownOrigin, a UK-based NFT marketplace, saying it would further promote its business in the field of digital collections. It can be expected that eBay will guide more brands to sell various types of digital artworks in the future, and more brands, traffic, and funds from outside the circle will quickly pour into this industry.
It is foreseeable that as the market continues to slump, the valuations of projects in the primary and secondary markets of the crypto industry will shrink significantly compared to before. This will be a favorable opportunity for well-funded giants to carry out mergers and acquisitions, and we may see more and more projects in the future. Similar actions.